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Theater review: 'Santaland Diaries' - Who knew humiliation could be so much fun?

By Quinton Skinner Special to the Pioneer Press

Posted:
11/29/2010 12:01:00 AM CST

Updated:
11/29/2010 06:56:26 PM CST

David Sedaris' first-person account about unemployment driving him to take a gig as an elf over the holidays might well take on an added resonance after the past couple of years — a time in which many of us would have been happy to don tights and a spangled hat in exchange for a decent paycheck. But even in tight times, what can save us day to day is a wry, knowing laugh at the world, which this Frank Theatre production amply supplies.

Joe Mantello's adaptation turns the original story into a one-man show, and performer Joe Leary nicely channels Sedaris' arm's-length observational humor, which manages to send up the targets of his description while rarely resorting to meanness.

It's the key to Sedaris at his best, and director Wendy Knox keeps the tone astringent but warm, full of verbal wit but devoid of darkness of spirit.

Because this is, after all, the story of an episode of personal humiliation played for laughs. After a period of interviews and auditions (and stiff competition from those more challenged in height), Sedaris finds his own identity subsumed into that of Crumpet, his North Pole alter ego. And so begins the push-pull between bemused observation and a sporadic hunger for lost dignity.

The show largely becomes an opportunity for the chastened Crumpet to watch a parade of humanity go past for weeks on end, with distressed shoppers and panicked parents enacting an annual holiday ritual in the presence of grown adults dressed up as characters from pop mythology.

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The running joke is our collective beastliness and stupidity, although there's room as well for pleasant oddity (such as the Santa who bores young children with questions about holistic medicine).

Of course, as time goes on, Crumpet is an increasingly less-than-happy camper, crumbling under the strain of projecting constant sunshine and with garden-variety human failings turned noxiously abrasive. But matters never turn really dark; Leary keeps his frustration focused on self-deprecation rather than lashing out, and at no time are we asked to deal with cynical ruminations on the holiday itself.

If anything, Santaland is a microcosm of humanity from the cave to the jetway: absurd, incoherent and occasionally worthy of affection.

As with Sedaris' writing, we're not asked to delve deep into his thoughts about himself, the world or its traditions. Instead, he simply portrays things as they are and makes the case for them being very funny.

In this show, coming in at less than an hour and a half, we have a satire that bites without drawing blood. It's a fine piece of storytelling, delivered with assurance, and manages to send up everything in sight without bringing us down. Crumpet's time was clearly not wasted.